If Chuck Hagel’s performance in his confirmation hearing last week was comparable to a deer caught in the headlights, John Brennan’s artificially earnest, overly agreeable performance before the Senate Armed Services Committee today brought to mind a kid imploring his teacher to raise his “B” grade to an “A.”

“If I am confirmed, a trust deficit between the committee and the CIA would be wholly unacceptable to me, and I would make it my goal on day one of my tenure and every day thereafter to strengthen the trust between us,” Brennan told the Senate Intelligence Committee, which has consistently been frustrated by a lack of information-sharing and forthrightness from this White House.

“I have a reputation for speaking my mind, and at times doing so in a rather direct manner, which some attribute to my New Jersey roots,” he continued. “I like to think that my candor and bluntness will reassure you that you will get straight answers from me, maybe not always the ones you like, but you will get answers and they will reflect my honest views. That’s the commitment I make to you.”

And whereas the right bore down on Hagel in that contentious hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee, the left had their share of frustration from President Obama’s counterterrorism chief, nominated to be the next leader of the CIA, as they sought answers to the administration’s drone program and other aspects of the war on terror.

Numerous protesters were scattered throughout the room, keeping the Capitol Police busy as they stood up in turn — sometimes on their chairs — to hold up signs and shout about drone victims.

“I’m going to say once again that we welcome everyone here, that we expect no clapping. We expect no hissing. We expect no demonstration in this room. This is a very serious hearing. I will stop the hearing, and I will ask the room to be cleared,” Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) said after the first outburst.

Two more protesters interrupted Brennan’s opening statement. “The CIA and the Obama administration refuse to even tell Congress. They won’t even tell Congress what countries we are killing children in,” one yelled.

At the fourth interruption, Feinstein suspended the hearing. “I’m going to ask that the room be cleared and that the Code Pink associates not be permitted to come back in,” she said. Protesters got a few minutes to dish to assembled news reporters and photographers before being led out.

Brennan, who joined the CIA at age 24 in 1980, restarted his opening statement with “a special salute to David Petraeus, a patriot who remains, as do all former directors, one of the staunchest advocates of the Agency’s mission and workforce.”

“Simply stated, the need for accurate intelligence and prescient analysis from CIA has never been greater than it is in 2013 or than it will be in the coming years,” Brennan said.

“Historic political, economic and social transformations continue to sweep through the Middle East and North Africa with major implications for our interests, Israel’s security, our Arab partners and the prospects for peace and stability throughout the region. We remain at war with al-Qaeda and its associated forces, which, despite the substantial progress we have made against them, still seek to carry out deadly strikes against our homeland and our citizens, and against our friends and allies.”
Feinstein mainly sought assurances that the Intelligence Committee wouldn’t be stonewalled as usual when requesting documents and full briefings on intelligence matters.

Ranking Member Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.) asked Brennan about an interview he gave years ago opining the CIA should be out of the detention business. “Your view seems to be that, even if we could save American lives by detaining more terrorists, using only traditional techniques, it would be better to kill them with a drone or let them go free rather than detain them,” Chambliss said.

“I never believe it’s better to kill a terrorist than to detain him,” Brennan said. “…I’m a strong proponent of doing everything possible, short of killing terrorists, bringing them to justice, and getting that intelligence from them.”

Under later questioning from Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) about who should do detain and interrogate then, Brennan said the military and FBI were options, as well as leaving it up to “international partners.”

“And that’s where, in fact, most of the interrogations are taking place of terrorists who have been taken off of the battlefields in many different countries,” he said. “…The CIA should be able to lend its full expertise, as it does right now, in terms of — in support of military interrogations, FBI debriefings and interrogations and our foreign partner debriefings. And they do that on a regular basis.”

The vibes I got from my Outsider Chair in front of those C-Span images on the computer screen was of a New Jersey bred street-wise guy who’s areddy-yet been through a twenty five year career with our C.I.A. and is probably, if the Senate sensibly consents, the new Director…..a badly needed career man as the Boss and not a dilettante political appointee, here for a while, gone after a while…Next!Please!….type of rotation. cf: Goss and his Goslings. Petraeus would’ve been just fine without that woman problem; he’s certainly not the only guy entangled with the wrong woman. Petraeus should’ve known better? Certainly, just as for all the rest of us in similar maneuvers.

A man like Brennan here has absolutely no need to “implore” his teacher for a better grade. A man like Brennan does not “implore” anything of anyone.

Only the deformed braincells of a Left Wing moonbat a Lame Stream EneMedia reporter a Democrat and of course the USURPER -in- Chief himself could hold such disparate thoughts as ‘dripping water on Terrorists faces is evil torture’ and ‘ killing people, including American Citizens, with rockets from 30,000 feet regardless of collateral damage without any due process of Law is OK’.
Don’t get me wrong I don’t disagree with drone strikes I just disagree with the collosal illogical HYPOCRISY of calling water boarding evil TORTURE and THEN illogically at the SAME time agreeing with drone strikes,

Dempsey is a worthless slug and should resign. He folded his sorry ass tent and is down with the cause with Obama. If I was a soldier and had to work under these losers, I could not take it. Imagine your son or daughter abandoned on the battlefield and all we get are these punk excuses for the biggest baddest military in the world. Why the Secretary of State (she said she was responsible–remember?) would send unharmed diplomats into a hell hole place like Benghazi should be instructive of the kind of mindless, reckless, stupid behavior when executing the dumb ass lead from your ass foreign policy of thsi two bit administration. I am sick and tired of these hearings. Who is going to get fired and when? That is the operative questions you fools. So far I see no one paying the ultimate price except the four who lost their lives.

Obama,Clinton, Brennan, Dempsey et al are clearly war criminals. The drone program targets people for execution without even the pretense of a trial. The collateral damage of these attacks wipes out untold numbers of civilians, many of them children. So the leader of the Americans spend their time exoriating the NRA for being the cause of a maniac who killed young children while they sit in their well padded seats in their sumptuous offices sending out order that result in the untold number of children’s deaths. The fact that these leaders of the americans are not seen for what they are by the great unwashed, uninformed, sleazy americans is definite proof that the americans are no better than all the other supporters of totalitarian governments in the previous century. The American world state under Obama and Clinton is a criminal enterprise and anyone with a brain knows it.

Targeted killing, whether by drone or by JDAM, results in less collateral damage and fewer civilian casualties than traditional bombing. I don’t read how you think we should deal with illegal combatants, who don’t observe Geneva conventions as they wage war on both our military forces and our civilians. If they can be snatched, perhaps we can derive intelligence from them, but that’s not always possible, and always requires putting our forces at risk doing so. But doing so we rarely get justice. At worst, they sit in a cell at Guantanamo, where they’re well-fed, well cared for, and get to play soccer. Then they’re freed so they can rejoin the fight.

It does cause much more collateral damage than the old style cloak and dagger assasination though.

Right now we are getting away with it because we are the only ones who can do this sort of thing. That is fine with me but as the technology becaomes more widespread I think we will see some new rules, written or otherwise.

“It does cause much more collateral damage than the old style cloak and dagger assasination though.”

It is also much more possible than cloak and dagger.
There is no insufficiency in the rules of warfare, with respect to war by robot. All the rules of war apply to it, and in and of itself it violates none of them.

There is no more a trial required to kill a terrorist legitimately than there is a guilty verdict required for an infantryman to fire on the enemy, or more analogously, for artillery to fire on direction from credible reports from surveillance. I see no evidence the use of drones is less discriminate or less proportionate than that.

Uninterrupted the terrorists kill civilians by tens and hundreds, and when they can by thousands, and this is their intent. “Civilians” are killed by remotely operated drone operators only by accident and happenstance when in fact it happens, certainly doesn’t happen every time, and many of those “civilians” are fully aware of the danger they invite on themselves and their loved ones, as they shelter those they know to be terrorists.